The Bell Tower Blog: Cardinal Brennan, for the record
Email: bsmolock@verizon.net
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Every now and then you come across something that completely shocks your system.
I was born and raised in Centralia, Pennsylvania.. My first few years of life were surrounded by homes being knocked down, a town with an underground fire, carbon monoxide monitors in basements, and residents of my hometown leaving one by one in arguments, hostility, and pain.
No one ever truly seemed to get over things. I was luckily young enough that moving to a whole new place. East Park Street became a childhood memory...
Fast forward to years later. No photographs of the house--to my knowledge--existed. Just memories.. distant long-ago memories. My brother and sister remember more. So do my mom and dad. But it's something tough to talk about that era of no-good feelings with people that lived through it in more gory detail.
In doing some research on the old hometown, I came across a article from the COURIER-JOURNAL in Kentucky.. It's an article about a new book that came out called THE DAY THE EARCH CAVED IN: AN AMERICAN MINING TRAGEDY--a document of the day 7th grader Todd Domboski fell into a hole that opened up in one of Centralia's hot spots to be published in April 2007..
The photograph that accompanies the story gave me the chills: It was my block. East Park Street. More importantly, my house 3rd from the Church, is in the picture. A document of a time that was.. A snapshot of history--smoke from the mine fire was rising in the background near St. Ignatius Church (which is gone now.) The houses in this photo are gone now. The giant pine tree in the dead center of this photo was in our backyard. Even that is gone now, falling to the earth perhaps because of the continuously burning underground fire that changed everyone's life.
There is proof of existence in a photograph. Though the landscape is forever altered and 100% different from the aerial view this photograph contains, it's still breathing proof of something that was real. I was there. Perhaps that day. In that house. And at the moment the photo was snapped, perhaps I was living through something that would soon become a distant memory.
Bryan Smolock
www.schmuckraker.com
All the news Unfit to Print
Some random rakings..
Former Bush Campaign head revolts: Calls for Iraq withdrawel.. says that John Kerry was right!
The Bush Administration's official response: It reflects the divisiveness of the Iraq war...
Newt Gingrich foot in the mouth disease continues: Says bilingual ballots is equal to "living in a ghetto"
Pet food recall expands..
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